


object permanence

by therewasagirl



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, F/M, PTSD, character exploration, slowburn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-13
Updated: 2018-01-13
Packaged: 2019-03-01 22:30:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13304691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therewasagirl/pseuds/therewasagirl
Summary: in psychology,object permanencedescribes how somethingcontinues to existeven when it cannot be seen,heard, touched, or smelled.Noor Shirazie, into the wildfire: mourning departures





	object permanence

**Author's Note:**

> an: please try to have mercy on me when it comes to journalism talk/lawyer talk, because I know nothing at all about it and I’m just concerned with making it sound good.
> 
> The whole about Karen thinking of Matt and the reasons why it didn't work out is built around a Warsan Shire poem titled ’34 reasons why we failed at love’. I’ve changed the order of the reasons and sometimes added to them to fit the story and the characters, but it’s still her poem. I will probably change the summary too later on.

 

> _the doors will shut          love          in your face          love—_
> 
> _knock them down          climb the fucking fire_
> 
> _escape_
> 
> **_-   Jennifer Givhan,_ ** _“Quinceañera,”_

_‘Maybe you_ are _an alcoholic. Maybe you’re in a fight club, maybe you sleep with a whole harem of women…’_

Maybe it was never as much about him as she’d thought. Maybe she’d just been looking for home for too long[1]. Maybe because sometimes when he smiled, she could imagine it: the kind of life she used to think she’d have. It had been so long since she’d thought it possible.

_I was lonely, Matt, so I did lonely things._

And maybe she didn’t go back because she was angry enough to think he liked her better when she was quiet.

-

The first time she hears ‘Shining Star’ on the radio, after, she is so startled that she stops breathing and doesn’t move for long moments, looking around with the irrational expectation that Frank was going to just walk into her office and sit down on the chair in front of her.

She gets up and switches Ben’s old radio off before she realizes that she’s sweating under her silk blouse.

It’s not the first time she thinks about Frank since he disappeared and usually it’s not so abrupt. Most times she can’t even figure out why he pops into her head, what reminds her of him. He was such a big part of her life for months and months, her focus on him ( _his life, his loss, his anger, his violence – her life her loss her anger her violence_ ) as sharp as the pinprick of a needle, that now he enters her mind without reason or permission.

She almost resents it.

Sometimes she imagines what she would say to him, if he ever had the gall to face her again. If he ever might want to. What _he_ would say, after he slammed the door on her face harder than anyone else had before him.

Was it? Was it harder? She’s had plenty of rejections before, it tastes different every time. Somehow though, his words just keep echoing in her head months after he’s said them.

_‘’I’m already dead’. That’s what you said Frank. You said you were dead. Dead people don’t want anything, do they? Do they, Frank?’_

-

She is sitting in Ellison’s office when Gregory Ford struts in, all buttoned up and polished, eyes almost as grey as his hair. He barely looks at her after shaking her hand – even though she is the one who wrote the first article that finally brought Ford to the table. Karen doesn’t truly mind. She knows what boxes she checks in the eyes of most people.

_Misdirection is good strategy._

And ‘inoffensive’ is as good a survival tactic as any in new York. She’d thought it wouldn’t work for long, if she’s quite honest. Nobody’s stupid enough to make the same mistake twice, right? She sure wouldn’t be! Then she realized that most men would never truly be comfortable with a woman who looks like her and is able to shake them down, so they solve that cognitive dissonance by underestimating her, almost every single time.

“The company your client has been working for lied to thousands of people.” Ellison says, pushing his glasses back on the bridge of his nose.

“I don't know anything about that, I don’t represent them. And try to remember that I’m here as a favor to you, Ellison.”

“Greg, we’ve known each other a long time so let’s not start bullshitting each other now. You’re here because your client wants a chance to give his side of the story before we break this thing wide open.”

Karen knows enough about lawyers to know, the second Ford emailed them to set this meeting that he was going to compromise. Just like she knew that the whole conversation up to this point had been a dick measuring contest.  So she’s not surprised when Ford sighs, leans back in his chair and just asks about their terms.

“The interview will be held at Bulletin offices. Karen Page will be asking the questions.”

Ford glances in her direction, then in the direction of her legs. “That’s fine.”

It’s so predictable, she’s starting to measure men by how long it takes them to do specific things in her presence.

“Three sessions.” Ellison adds, and it makes Ford roll his eyes.

“He’s flying in from Paris. You get one, for one hour.”

“Your client didn’t develop a deadly vaccine in one hour.” Karen says slowly. It’s the first moment since he came into the room that Ford is actually saying something that might interest her. “Yes, we know about that too. Three sessions.”

Ford doesn’t look away from her. “Two.”

“Two hours each, with your client’s availability for a follow up.” She smiles very faintly. “Or he can wait until we call him for a comment before publishing.”

Ford stares long and hard at her face, colorless eyes unblinking. “If you agree to limiting your questions to an approved list.”

Karen lifts her chin a little. That’s too easy. Isn’t it? “What else?”

Ford seems to think about it for a moment, then turns to Ellison. “I want a translator.”

She tries her hardest not to show her feelings on her face. This is not the time to be smug. “I met your client at Charlie Rose’s. His English is better than his French[2].”

Ford turns back to her, contemplates her for a long moment with something that is almost like humor in his eyes. “Very well.”

“Then I think we’re done.” Ellison says as he gets up. “We will see you and your client on Monday.”

They shake hands, and then Ford turns to her, hand outstretched in front of him. She steps forward, puts her hand in his.

“I’ll be looking forward to meeting you again, Miss Page.”

“I’m sure you will.” She’s calm, despite the way he smiles. She knows how some people are very well aware calmness and a steady voice can be as threatening as a shout; doesn’t let it rattle her.

His smile widens. He doesn’t let go of her hand. “How old were you?”

“Excuse me?”

“When you first realized that you were a good liar. How old were you? I was nine.”

Her smile is saccharine as she pulls her hand back.

“Anything’s else we can offer to your client’s comfort?” Ellison interrupts. “A croissant? Some pate?”

Ford rolls his eyes. “Fuck you, Ellison.”

“You have a good day.” Karen says, as sweet as she can make it. Ford closes the door behind him without slamming it.

Ellison lets out a long breath “Okay, that went smoother than I expected.”

Karen keeps looking at the door. “Yeah? I didn’t notice.”

-

They’re at a diner, maybe it looks like the one they were last in, maybe it doesn’t. Maybe there’s blood on the walls, maybe it’s just the kitschy décor.

Maybe it’s both. Here, it doesn’t really matter.

‘ _How did it feel to kill him? Did it make you feel better_?’

She can’t imagine what he’d say and so in these conversations he doesn’t really say anything.

She still resents him for all of it. That door, that night, the cold, the dark. Here though, she’s not afraid. She’s in her head after all, and so is this conversation she’s not really having. Her secrets can crawl all over it.

‘ _It didn’t make_ me _feel better, but maybe it was different for you. Maybe I never understood you. Maybe I imagined it all. Maybe you knew this and used me the whole time._ ’

It’s an unkind thing to say, but- ‘ _You don't mind, do you?’_

No she doesn’t think he would. Maybe he’d even remind her that she used him too and she knows it, needing so desperately for him to be a certain way.

Sometimes she gets angry at herself for how it all happened; other times it feels like it _had_ to happen exactly like that. It had hurt, she can’t deny it, although it takes her a while to understand the reasons why. But in the end, they unfold for her, one by one, and every time she thinks she knows the reason, she discovers a new layer.

He’d chosen vengeance over truth. He didn’t have to pull the trigger, but he’d chosen to anyway. _That_ was who he was now. He knew it, she knew it, and the truth… the truth had been superfluous to him by that point, and so had she. He’d chosen not to give a shit about why. He’d taken answers from her too, and there – _that_ was the line. Not the blood or the death but the sheer _blind stubbornness_ of that one hard fact.

That says something about her, too. Most days she’s sure it’s something ugly.

…She’d thought she’d mattered enough to stop him, and she hadn’t. Maybe that is why it had felt so fucking personal.

It had no right to feel that way. It had been his choice, he’d had the right to make it. It pisses her off that it still feels like some kind of thin betrayal. She wants to understand why, where inside herself she has to dig in, what wrinkle she has to smooth out for it to _stop_. She has no right to feel this way- none of what Frank Castle did or didn’t do had anything to do with her - but she can’t exactly help it.

Just like hadn’t been able to help slipping so abruptly into familiarity with him. How she’d been able to understand his pain so well she’d felt like an echoing chamber for it. The startling intimacy of being seen for who she was and who she hid; _really seen_ , without being afraid or worried. How it had just… _happened_ and he hadn’t even _blinked_.

And then it ended, and there was no going back and everything else after felt a little more like hiding[3] than it did before.

Every time she tries to rationalize her way out of this hole she fails.

She remembers his bruised hands linked in front of him, finger twitching. Looking at her like he was seeing through all the milk and honey bullshit, all the way down to the center.

‘ _I guess you wouldn’t know about that, would you_? _What would the dead know about being lonely anyway?_ ’

-

It still hurts. That’s one more secret. But it’s not a wound he leaves her with: it’s the truth.

 _‘You don’t lie to me, do you? Even when I want you to. I guess that’s fair._ ’

Maybe that’s why she keeps dragging his memory around like some kind of morbid comfort blanket. Maybe it’s true that not all ghosts haunt. His seems to be there to keep her company until she’s ready to join the living.

It sounds like some kind of hope, though Karen isn’t sure. It’s always been hard for her to tell the difference between that and denial.

-

A truth – that’s what Matt had given her. Just one: _that_ one. The suit, the mask, all the reasons behind his every lie.

It had shocked her.

They’d spent hours together that night, talking about it. Every time she felt she had to step away from him, she couldn’t let it go. There was more to dig into. The more she needed to know the more she closed into herself like a fist.

They’d been hard on each other that night.

 _What happened? When? How is this possible? How are_ you _possible? Why?_

Sometimes she thinks back to it and wonders just how much she’d hurt him that night. He’d been so calm. So still. It had made her angry because she’d known what he was doing. She knew way Matt Murdock sounded like when he was bracing for a hit, gritting teeth for some reason. She’d wanted a fight but he wouldn’t give it. He didn’t have it in him. He’d just been sad.

He was sad and she was tired, standing on the ruins of a life they could have had, like they could remake it. Fix what broke with a string of gold and make it all okay.

A part of her had wanted to. She’d wanted to make that terrible look on his face go away. The rest of her had known she couldn’t. ( _She’d remembered – the night, the woods, the cold, the bleeding man on the ground and a decision that was a break. She remembered. She’d had to blink the memory away_. _There are some kind of mending - breaking - people must do on their own_ ). The way she’d known that she was too tired and he was still hiding and that you just couldn't take pain from people like they were a well and you were the bucket. It didn’t work that way.

She’d turned away, breathed deep, looked up and blinked fast so that the tears wouldn’t fall.

“What do you want from me Matt?”

“Nothing. I just… I just needed you to know. I couldn’t keep lying to you anymore. I’m sorry I ever did.”

She’d turned to face him. “Why did you?”

He’d shifted on his feet. Hand tightening on his cane, the one she knows he doesn’t need.

“I never thought that part of my life should ever mix with the other parts. It’s dangerous and… it gets people hurt. I never wanted that for you.”

On and on, like this.

The only thing that became clear to her that night was his need and the fact that he wanted to bury it.

‘ _I won’t do it anymore. I can’t._ ’

 _A_ truth is not _the_ truth – and he kept avoiding it. But Karen knows enough about pain to see the mark of it on someone else’s face. She’d known back then, just as she was sure of now that he was still hiding something. Someone, somewhere broke his heart and made him hopeless and now he wanted to close his eyes and forget.

Hide from it; from himself.

She remembers running from a part of herself too, trying to hide. Looking for something normal people do, something boring, safe. Trying to become the person she was supposed to be, before her life went to shit. A secretary had sounded like such a good place to start. Her very own ‘running away into the mountains’.

That went just swimmingly.

If there’s one thing Karen knows about choosing sides in the war inside your head, is that it doesn’t work.

When he doesn’t agree, Karen tells him she needs time. The truth is, he needs it more.

-

‘ _I’m not running_.’ She says firmly. He doesn’t respond, but his judgment is heavy. She slams the fridge door closed. Something inside falls down. ‘ _Every time I think I’m over it, I think of something else he lied about and it just comes back from the start. And he keeps doing it!_ ’

_‘Maybe you’re scared.’_

_‘Maybe you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.’_

He huffs. ‘ _Yeah, maybe I don’t_.’

_‘All this time he was there and I didn’t even know that I’d lost him. Months, a whole year.’_

Loss works in funny ways though, no? Sometimes you can keep losing someone even after they’ve left.

_‘Don’t do that.’_

She downs the shot of bourbon and then fills the glass again. _‘Whatever.’_

_‘He’s here now.’_

_‘Oh, so the shit that happened before, that doesn’t matter?’_

_‘He wants to be yours now.’_

_‘Bullshit, he doesn’t. He wants to be_ something _, but he’s lying about that too. He’s just hoping I can give him somewhere to hide. Forgive him for shit he isn’t even telling me about. I’m not his fucking altar!’_

_‘Maybe you just don’t have the balls to let him hold on to you. You scared, Karen?’_

She looks up from her glass into the darkness of her apartment. Leaves the glass, grabs the bottle by the throat and walks towards her room.

‘ _I liked you better when you didn’t talk back_.’

She imagines him the way he was in that diner. That way he had of smiling: a halfway gesture between a smirk and something else. Lopsided, kind of sarcastic.

‘ _Yeah, you ain’t the first person to tell me that.’_

-

Time.

For some people, time is what they need when they need to unpack strong emotion. For others, it means ‘ _let’s see if we manage to lose each other quietly, maybe it will hurt less that way’_. For Karen Page, time is mostly a deadline. It runs backwards. You get an allotted amount of it, for anything, and whatever you find at the finish line will be it - whatever’s left will be real. And then you have to deal with that.

‘ _Let’s see who we are, once we have figured out who we want to be. Let’s see where we end up. Let’s see what we look like when we’re honest about ourselves._ ’

She can see every inch of the defeat he feels in the slumped line of his shoulders, the wretchedness on his face and it makes her feel as miserable as he looks for causing it.

For the breadth of a moment, it almost seems possible to step away from her storm of feelings and just be his friend, comfort him. But Karen keeps very still at the other end of the room, and the moment passes.

Putting some measure of time between them is the kindest she can be to either of them.

-

In the end the interview with the doctor Egbert barely gives way to anything Karen didn’t know. She does get an invitation to the Christmas party that Roxxon organizes every year, however, like some kind of consolation prize. The smile on his face suggests it’s a patronizing insult. Karen knows by now that the richer you are, the more important it is to be able to insult people politely, but she still refuses to smile back at Ford as she deadpans that she’ll be happy to attend.

After they all step out of the conference room, Karen leans back in her chair and lets her bones feel the accumulated weight of the journey that brought her to this moment. She is so tired. Just so tired of digging deeper and deeper and not getting anywhere. She’s bruised herself against every wall she could find and it just leads to more hurt and no payoff.

Not that that kind of thinking will get her anywhere.

She gets up, puts her notes in her bag, straightens her skirt, her shirt, her hair. When she walks out, she can feel half a dozen pairs of eyes on her back. They’re like a weight, so tangible it’s an effort not to curl her shoulders in.

They make her feel like she has a hole right in the center of her.

‘ _Hey Frank. It’s crazy to see out here in daylight. I’ve been having one hell of a shitty month Frank. How’s your day going?_ ’

How would Frank Castle spend his days? She doesn’t really know, nor should she care, yet here she is.

She knows he’d rather _be_ dead, and she knows that he’s not, _he’s not_ , no matter how much his words still make her teeth ache with anger. She’d been to shocked to call bullshit on him then , but she’s not now!

_‘Dead people don't feel rage, Frank. They don’t feel anything. Their hearts don’t break hard enough to make them want to set the world on fire.’_

He’d rather be forgotten, but Karen can no more forget him than he can wish for his own heart to stop.

She remembers that time he told her that he used to sing along to ‘shining star’. She still can’t imagine it.

No that’s a lie, she can. She’d seen the pictures; there had been so many of them, he had been in almost all of them. … How would Frank Castle would spend his days? How does he?

Missing people he lost, probably.

One more thing they have in common.

Karen closes the door of her office and leans back against it for a second.

_‘Are you even still alive out there, Frank? Really, I mean.’_

The thought makes her eyes sting. Wouldn’t be the first time she’s had conversations with dead people. It keeps making it harder to talk to the living.

-

She goes to the Roxxon party Egbert and Ford invited her to. She goes, because she wants to make them regret their arrogance, because it matters and because having the last word is a compulsion.

Because she can’t _stand_ the helplessness.

Karen lets them chat her up, compliment her dress, her hair. Lets them look at the barely there cleavage.

_‘Misdirection works. Hit them when they least expect it.’_

_‘That’s right, I will.’_

"You know doctor; the truth is that I like you.”

He scoffs. “Do you?”

Karen considers it and then shakes her head with a smile that mirrors the one on Egbert’s face.

“No, that’s a lie, I don’t. But I don’t hate you. And most importantly, I think you’re way in over your head and that prison is the last place you belong.”

“Miss Page-” Ford intervenes but she cuts right over him, never looking away from Egbert’s eyes.

“I know the people at Roxxon are smart. I’m sure they’ve got a way to get you your blood money with no paper trail, and since the chat we had the other day was, shall we say, useless, I’m just here tonight to make you a promise.”

“You’re in no position to making threats, Miss Page.” Ford warns. Karen just shrugs.

“I hope that’s not what it sounded like, Mister Ford. I’m only here to say I will do what I do best: wait and watch. Until you buy a house. Or your lovely wife buys a car. Or till little Leonore buys a toothbrush.” She takes a very small step in his direction and is indecently satisfied when he steps away. “You need to understand this doctor. Not a single Langarde for the next hundred years will be able to spend a nickel of that money without being humiliated, disgraced and locked up.” She smiles again, turns it towards Ford too. “You both have a nice night.”

Egbert’s thin lips pull back into an ugly snarl. “If you were a man, Page, I’d kick the living shit out of you.”

Karen glances at him and then away. No smile this time. “If you were a man, I might be worried.”[4]

She leaves immediately after. Ellison knows better than to ask her not to.

-

_‘Never thought I’d hear you say somethin’ like that.’_

_‘First time for everything.’_

_‘You don’t believe it.’_

She rolls her eyes. _‘No, I don't believe you need to beat women to be a real man, Frank.’_

_‘Why’d you say it?’_

‘He _believes it.’_

The tilt of his head, side to side, like he’s looking into a new angle every time. _‘You learning to scare people, ma'am?’_

_‘I’ve always known how to scare people, Frank.’_

_‘Is that right?’_

She leans back into the cab’s seat, watches the city lights rush by. Imagines him looking at her in that unnerving, unblinking way of his. _‘Anyone who’s ever wanted anything, has been scared of something. You just have to dig deep enough to find it. … It’s how i found you._ ’

_‘You’re starting to sound mean, Karen.’_

_‘Maybe I’m just starting to talk more. I wonder what you’d think about me now.’_

_‘You seem the same to me.’_

She smiles, draws little lines on the fogged up windows the way she used to when she was a kid. _‘Yeah, thought so.’_

-

He comes into her office at midnight, begging her to go with him, and the only answers that she can get from him are emotional exclamations. ‘ _I have to do this.’ ‘Please trust me’ ‘I can't tell you_ ’.

Karen goes. Of course she goes. She doesn’t resent the protection, she resents his need for trust, while giving so little of his true self away. It’s not that Matt wants to be a liar. She doesn't trust him that much anymore, but she trusts that he doesn’t mean to harm. It’s that he doesn't seem to know the difference anymore between what the truth is and what he wants to be true. Maybe he’s unwilling to look at teh truth in the eye.

She might have wanted to ask him what he’s so afraid of, once. Now Karen just worries over the lies he tells himself, the inconsistencies that seem to pull him into destructive patterns. He reminds her of people she used to know, who used the words ‘I can stop anytime I want’ a little too often.

_This is going to get you killed, Matt. I can almost see myself standing over your grave._

He stays so close on the way to the station but she feels like she’s never been further away from him.

“If I don’t do this, people are gonna die.”

That’s true too. She knows it is, just like she knows that he cannot help himself. He has to help. He has to keep her safe. He has to do great many things.

 _The truth shouldn’t be used the way you use it, Matt_ _ ** [5] ** _ _. I care about you, but I’m not sure if that’s a fact or a weapon anymore. You care about me, but you make me feel hopeless._

She hadn’t said that to him. Not in so many words. You don’t say shit like that to people you think you might never see alive again.

-

_‘You scared, Karen?’_

_‘I’m tired, Frank.’_

_‘Yeah, some people call that grief.’_

She’s sitting in an empty church, she can’t feel her fingers or her toes, there is an empty coffin in front of her and her eyes hurt cause she’s been crying so hard. She cried all her feelings so now she’s light enough to almost float away. She wonders if she would, if Foggy let go of her hand.

‘ _And what would you call this, Frank? These conversations I keep having with you? A rehearsal? For a conversations I might never have, with someone I might never meet again? Someone who might really **be** dead, someone who would rather be?_ ’

She snorts.

_‘A waste of time, is what I’d call it.’_

It probably is.

-

When Kevin died and she wouldn’t stop asking questions about how, ( _who, where, what_?) ( _after the first restraining order was filed against her_ ) they made her go to a shrink and he pointed her towards the five stages of grief.

It said there that it was like climbing a staircase, going through doors. Denial, Anger, Bargain, Depression, Acceptance – all there in neat little letters. And Karen had found it so funny, that they had names for the shit she happening in her head, that they put even that into boxes, as if it meant something. As if it mattered. As if she’d ever want to just get over it.

But she became suddenly invisible in everyone else’s eyes though. They would just look straight through her, like her questions didn’t matter. Karen had really lived up to the Anger part then.

After Matt, she thinks about it again. She is older now, calmer. She’s had time to think about a lot of things, figure them out. Technicalities of how loss happens, how it hurts. Some things don’t take her by surprise anymore ( _even though they still take her by the throat_ ). How when you lose someone, you don’t lose them all at once, you lose them in pieces. A card they can’t send anymore. Drinks you can’t have. Whole conversations. The way they used to smile at you, talk to you, how you even miss the lies. How all the parts of them that were in your life are not there anymore and instead of things you know about them, you start accumulating the things that are gone. How you know they’re gone – you _know_! - but there are moments, specific moments when the loss overwhelms you. And it’s like climbing the stairs in the dark and being sure that there’s one more step, but your foot falls down through the air and there’s a sickly moment of dark surprise [6].

You knew, you did, but you just remembered this one thing about them, ( _how how his voice – calm, smooth – used to calm her down. How he was so sure it used to ground her too_ ) that now is gone. Tomorrow it’s going to be some other thing. And on and on, forever.

_‘Good song. We used to sing along to it. Imagine me doing that?’_

_‘I think I could imagine it, yeah. What else? Do you see them everywhere?’_

_‘Everywhere.’_

_‘It’s going to stop one day. You will wake up one day and the thought of them won’t be the first one you have.’_

_‘No’_

_‘Yes. The day will go on and maybe you won't wish you were dead even once, and it will be so boring you won’t even notice.’_

_‘You don’t know shit. Loss doesn’t work the same for everybody.  I see them every time I look in the mirror.’_

_‘I know. But one day you won’t. Not until you remember. Then it will hurt your heart, how you could forget. And it will be like losing them all over again.’_

_‘No.’_

_‘You’re wrong Frank. You’re wrong.’_

_‘I’m not.’_

_‘Let’s bet on it.’_

_‘Being morbid won’t help you, Page. Don’t do that.’_

She knows it’s going to stop feeling like someone punched her heart right out of her chest, eventually. Maybe it’s cruel to say but life goes on. Thing is – it goes on with the holes. Those don’t go anywhere. You just stop bleeding everywhere, at some point, because grief is not a staircase to some place where it gets better. You get on and climb and by the time you’ve reached Acceptance, the loss is right behind it. Grief is a circle.

-

_I wanted to love you. I wanted you to know all my secrets and I wanted you to want to kiss me anyway. But I’d been running for so long, Matt. My hair still smelled of all the wars I’d been in and the one time i didn’t cover that up, you didn’t even hug me goodnight._

_I waited for you Matt. You didn't take one step._

_Sometimes that’s all it takes, Matt._

-

She starts having nightmares again, old ones and new ones welded together like gruesome Francis Bacon imitations. About Kevin and the woods and the snow. Claustrophobia has never been a particular terror she’s found in her dreams, but apparently that changed with age.

The woods close in and the darkness grows thick, like fog, like burning smoke. A darkness that is deeper than absence of light.

Her feet stick to it, like on tar.

It clings to her feet, cold, wet.

She knows she has to keep going because someone is waiting for her, someone important. She wants to scream for Kevin, but nothing comes out.

Her chest heaves, her arm hurts.

Her heartbeat sounds all around her, like a drum. Her harsh breath echoes in her ears, the whole forest is breathing with her.

Someone’s coming!

He grabs her by the hair, a fist right on her crown, and _pulls_.

It hurts.

The scream builds in her chest and chokes her. She has no voice here.

She scratches her hand down his face.

It’s cold it’s cold itscoldits _coldeverything **hurts**_ -

The hand is gone. No more pain now, everything is still, everything’s holding its breath.

There’s a touch of smooth metal against her ear.

_.380 shows thought…_

Close. Too close, barrel brushing against her cheek. Gentleness in macabre places. Her palms itch because of it.

She flinches, but can’t escape, she can’t move. Everything, her every choice led her here.

_‘Miss Page-’_

She counts her breaths. _Five, Six, Seven…_

_Wait… wait!_

The shot goes off, right next to her ear, the shockwave making her fall, fall and-

-she is wrenched back to life with a choked breath, hands clawing at her chest. She’s in her bed, tangled in her sheets. She’s sweat-soaked and with a heart that is trying to beat its way out of her chest, the horror still clinging to her, but she’s _alive_ and it’s spectacular and for one second it’s all she can think about.

Her head falls into her hands with a groan. “Fuck. _Fuck_!”

She takes deep breaths, again, and again until her heart rate slows down.

When she opens her eyes again, the alarm on her bedside table tells her its four thirty in the morning. Karen sighs, and then throws the covers off. As good a time to start the day as any.

-

 _‘I wanted to help you Frank. You had your own choice to make, I just wanted to help you make the right one. It was about me but not_ just _about me. You believe me, right?’_

And that night…that night when she woke up in the cold, with her head throbbing and her arm screaming at her, for such long moments she hadn’t known where she was… _when_ she was. Her knees landing on the asphalt, the cold, the forest, the cold, the glass, the _cold_. She’d felt 20 and scared out of her mind again, heart in her throat, waiting for Harvey Green to come around her car and…

The trail of blood Schoonover had left behind had brought her back more than anything else. She’d gone after it, because she’d known - she’d _known -_ and she’d wanted to stop it.

 _‘I was chasing you and I was chasing me too, okay. I made the wrong choice once, Frank. I have to keep making the right one now, over and over because I know how it feels like to live with the wrong one. It doesn’t make up for anything, but I have to. You have to understand:_ I have to _. Because I’m still not sorry, Frank. I’m not…’_

Even now, she isn’t. She knows and she’s not even sure what it says about her anymore. The bar of any choice is whether they would make that same choice again, and she did. When it came down to it, she’d pulled the trigger too, and now that she thinks about it as she chooses her outfit for the day, it sounds more hypocritical than she’d felt that night in the woods.

Different circumstances, same result. Wrong choice. Again.

_‘Is it wrong not to want to die though? Is it? I guess I’m not sorry for that either.’_

_‘Then why does it matter, telling me about it?’_

She stares hard at her own face, the smooth planes of her cheeks, the pink lips and colorless eyelashes. Her mother's jawline, her brothers chin. Her father’s eyes.

‘ _It doesn't. You’re no more an altar than I am.’_

‘ _That’s right.’_

_‘Forgiveness is not what I need from you, Frank.’_

_‘Nah. You want someplace to hide too?’_

Karen stops putting up her hair, smoothes out the distaste on her face. _‘Don't be an asshole, Francis.’_

She’s never heard him laugh, and she doesn’t want to imagine it, but she thinks he might. Maybe. If something were really funny, he would.

She gets into her skirt, buttons up her shirt.

_‘Y’know, friendly ears might be easier to come by if you actually kept some company with real friends.’_

She scoffs. _‘You’re the only killer I know. We gotta stick together.’_

_‘Ah. Now who’s the asshole?’_

She applies her makeup one precise step after another, the end result almost a transparent film over her face, but still there. Sometimes that's all she needs between herself and the rest of the world. The flimsier the barrier, the better it works, too.

Things have a way of trying to slip through though, when you want to live one way and your secrets pull you into another. Desperation makes everyone careless. So does anger.

_‘This is not a game Karen this is dangerous.’_

_‘Right and so is working at Nelson and Murdock!’_

How his face had changed. Confusion, curiosity. The dots connecting in his head, the dots missing. How much that had frightened her. How she’d put her hand over her mouth wishing to swallow the words back down.

It had almost slipped out. Almost.

Funny thing about secrets, they get heavier with time, until they’re almost bursting to come out. To someone, anyone. She’d been dying to vomit her truth all over anyone who'd listen.

But not really, though. Not really.

_It was self defense._

But she hid it. She hid it. Lied about it. She wants to help but the first order of things is always to protect herself. No matter who gets hurt.

Karen slams the ash brown mascara down, lips pursed in anger.

_And what’s so wrong with that? Anybody else out there falling over themselves to help me?_

She hisses, trying to get away from her thoughts. What is it with rainy days that made her spin in circles? _Just shut up!_

At the back of her mind, someone laughs at her petulance. Sometimes it sounds like Kevin. Sometimes like Matt. After the third time she almost died - after she learned what sounds a man made when he was being stabbed to death - sometimes it sounds like Frank… She can stand those. It is easy to talk back to all of them. Honestly, the truth beneath the truth is that the scariest times are the ones like today, when she is laughing back at herself.

She can lie to the whole world but it doesn’t change who stares at her in a mirror.

Karen finishes brushing her hair, applies the last of her lipstick. Stares at herself in the mirror like she’s looking at a different person.

_‘Yeah, the whole sweet thing suits you. Do you ever forget you’re not like this? That you’re like this cause it works. Gets you places.’_

She knew she was going to have a bad day the second she woke up from that dream, but now she’s sure. Her shoulders sag a little.

_‘No Frank, I don’t.’_

Sometimes she feels more performance than Karen – whoever that is. So what? She can’t be the only person in existence that puts herself on piece by piece some days. And anyway, she knows the difference between someone who wears their worst self on their sleeve and someone who buries it deep inside. She falls somewhere in the middle, most of the time -

_‘Misdirection works. But I think that's something you already know. Aint that right, ma’m?’_

_‘Yeah, Frank. That’s exactly right. I don’t lie about it though.’_

_‘Not your fault assholes assume shit about you, is it?’_

_‘No, it’s really not.’_

Performance matters and the line dividing what is real with what is useful sometimes blurs, but that’s not the point. She’s learned that it isn’t. She is what she does, the choices she makes. That’s what matters. The difference is the willingness to make the right choices day in day out because you know you could make the wrong choice easily – the way she had.

She is learning to be comfortable with all her contradictions, trying hard to not to pick sides. It’s still like trying to fit into clothes that are too small for her. Some days she fails, but its not so bad. Usually. Truth can be vicious but it’s only within its single inch of space that she has ever felt free. You can learn to accept vicious. You can even learn to love it, as long as you can look it in the face.

_‘I want to protect but I can kill, I have. I want the truth but I lie every day; I want to save lives, but I carry a gun. … I live in Hell’s Kitchen. Fuck every preconception.’_

_‘That’s nice to hear.’_

_‘You taught me that. You helped me understand when you made me let you go.’_

_‘Did you though? Let go?’_

_‘Yeah Frank, I did. I let go **some** of you, anyway. Some of the reasons why I couldn’t.’_

_‘That why we keep having these riveting conversations?’_

_‘No. That’s not it, no. Why, you mind keeping me company, Frank?’_

She remembers his voice. The way it was so low it dragged on the ground, how it sounded when he was trying to be careful.

_‘You having a bad day, Karen?’_

She sighs as she slips on her shoes.

_‘Yeah, Frank. I am. Wanna hang around a while? … What, you got better things to do?’_

_‘No ma’m. The dead don’t have anywhere else to go.’_

She really is having a bad day.

_‘How about some coffee?’_

_‘Yeah how about that?’_

-

She’d been six years old, when she first realized she was bad at lying. That's how early shed started practicing - though she hadn't realized _that_ until she was 25 and fluent.

-

_‘I’m not a saint.’_

Matt’s smile had always been one of her favorite things about him. The way his eyes crinkled at the corners and how she could tell when he was smiling cause he was happy, and when he was doing it to hide his anger.

_‘Can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that.’_

And she’d been so pleased, hadn’t she? That he’d thought that; that he was aware of it. It had seemed like an opening, a chance, some kind of sign that he would accept the parts of her that are not good. Not kind. Not soft. Not forgiving. That he’d be able to understand her when she can’t stop: chasing, talking, pushing.

Sometimes she can’t sleep because she can still feel the rain on her skin, his hand on her arm, tracing water upwards. His taste in her mouth.

_We didn’t have enough time Matt. It’s not a lie._

-

She has drinks with Foggy sometimes still, but between the two of them there is the kind of silence that feels like a third person at the table. He tells her about his life, she tells him about hers. The details become sparse the longer the conversations goes on. They can’t fake enthusiasm for too long with each other. Eventually they circle back to the same spot - like water down a drain.

He tells one night, about how he found Matt unconscious on a rooftop. How he’d been shot in the head and Foggy had thought he was dead. How immediately all the fears he’d had until that moment had materialized right in front of him, and never left.

“I barely remember how my life was like before I met him.” That’s what he’d said.

He’d cried then and Karen had slipped her arms around him, tried to give some comfort, find some softness in herself for him. It was hard, because if Matt had been there, in that seat they kept leaving out for him like they were on a missing pilot formation, she would have slapped him.

Foggy wasn’t angry, though; he was just sad. He couldn't really bear her anger so she didn’t let it show.

She can see what it’s doing to him, this endless guilt he keeps coming back to. How the bitterness of loss, the intolerable grief is all over him. The anxiety of falling out of the web of certainties and having to relearn life without the security of knowing how to do it[7]. 

She is grateful for the times when Marci joins them. Her sharpness cuts right through any wallowing.

At the bar, as she gets another round of beers for them, she looks at Foggy, the soft smile on his face and the look in Marci’s eyes and she talks to him. How she makes him smile even as his eyes remain sad, and thinks ‘ _I’ve never seen him like this. He could stay like this forever_.’ and the unfairness of it all makes her seethe.

She remembers how furious she’d been with Foggy, when Matt told her he’d known before she did and that he kept lying to her, misdirecting her. Protecting Matt.

Then she remembers that night with Grotto and Reyes, that undercover op in which he turned out to be bait. How Foggy had stopped her from going out there to find that lying Irish asshole, because ‘ _It’s a warzone Karen, you can't go out there_.’ How he had run out anyway when they said Daredevil might have been hit.

Running into a warzone, no thought at all about himself, just because Matt could have been hurt. He forgot safety then.

_‘The things we do for the people we love, huh?’_

_‘Love? Yeah, sure.’_

_‘Gets people into doing terrible things.’_

_‘Is that how you see it, Frank? Murder as an act of love?’_

He doesn't call bullshit out loud but his snort is the same as. _‘People who shot love out of my life don’t get to live. It’s that simple.’_

_‘I guess for you it is.’_

_‘But not for you?’_

_‘I don’t think it should be.’_

-

Eventually ‘sometimes for drinks’, becomes ‘there’s always next time’ and that becomes ‘maybe next week’. It’s easier for both of them both to deal with their own wounds alone, than to sit together and make Matt’s absence materialize in the form of the empty spot between them. It hurts her - she feels her life getting smaller in the places where there used to be so much love - but she knows what it’s like to prefer nothingness to all the reminders. Maybe it’s mercy, she thinks, so she doesn’t insist.

Maybe she’s not as brave as she thinks half the time.

-

She moves in September. Picks the place out carefully. Somewhere nice. Somewhere she can make it her own. Not too expensive, but not too shabby. She wants a place she can feel safe. It’s important.

The first thing she gets out from the boxes is Kevin’s watch. She puts it on the nightstand, eye- level, to the right. She hasn’t taken it out in almost three years, but maybe it’s time. Maybe. Let’s see if she can stand to look at it.

She takes out the pictures, puts them into frames, the books, the magazines. Actually unpacks everything she owns for the first time in ten years.

_‘Looks pretty different from that hole in the wall that got shot up.’_

_‘It’s been a long time Frank. I’ve almost forgotten you.’_

_‘Oh yeah? Good for you.’_

_‘It should look different. No more temporary bullshit. This has to be real. I want to live a life i like. Do something with it that makes me feel brave.’_

_‘You need that?’_

_‘I think so, yes.’_

_‘You sure about that?’_

_‘I am. I’m trying to be more like the person I want to be Frank. I’m trying really hard.’_

_‘Okay.’_

_‘That’s it?’_

_‘Yeah, that’s about it. … I’d hang some pictures on the walls. Maria used to think bare walls look sad.’_

_‘Yeah they kinda do.’_

-

_It just didn’t work out Matt. We couldn’t have. I loved you but I don’t think I ever knew you. And you never knew me, Matt. it I felt lonely when you held me._

-

When Karen walks into the coffee shop, she knows immediately which table she will need to sit. Emily Vance looks up when Karen stops by her table, dark eyes taking her in from the tip of her nose to the tip of her overused sneakers.

“Emily? I’m Karen Page.”

“Right.”

“May I sit?”

Emily doesn't blink. She’s not considering, she’s assessing. “Sure.” She finally says.

“How did you find me?” She asks once Karen has ordered her coffee and the waitress is far enough not to hear.

Karen smiles. “Straight to the point.”

“I don’t like small talk.”

“Good. I don’t either. I used the bio on your blog and some detective work.”

Emily pushes back her hair, fixes those velvet eyes on Karen’s. She has the heavy kind of stare of someone who doesn't flinch easily, and a round face that makes her look maybe fifteen, though Karen knows she’s twenty six. She can tell just by the way Emily sits - on the edge of her seat, back to the wall, furthest table from the windows, clear sightline to both exits -  that she’s ready to run at any moment.

“I really wanna know.” Emily repeats slowly and Karen understands.

“You say in your bio you're a third-year film major. And later you say you live across from Phoenix Cinema and that you always marathon the foreign movies program they play. You also wrote that you love the Phat Lady.”

“Right.”

“I got a list of all female film majors on NYC campus and cross-referenced it with students living in the upperclassmen dorms across from the cinema, which brought me to Cuyler Hall.”

Emily laughs at that and it makes Karen relax just a little. “I asked some people in my office if they knew the band the Phat Lady.”

Emily's lips twitch a little, a small smile. “Really?”

“And a NYC grad, one of our writers, laughed and said -”

She rolls her eyes. “It's a coffee order.”

“It is the most popular coffee order not on the menu at Hoagie Haven. So we went to Costa, one of the managers at Hoagie Haven, with pictures of the four female film majors living at Cuyler Hall and asked him if any were regular customers. He pointed at your picture and said, ‘That's my girl Emily.’”

“That's a lot of work.”

Karen shrugs. “I’m trying to impress my boss, angling for a raise.”

“Did it work?”

Karen takes out her notebook and her pen, smiles. “Depends on how our conversation will go.”[8]

-

She shuts the door behind her and locks it, slips out of her shoes and laughs when she trips a little. She is tipsy but she wasn’t in the mood for tipsy tonight. She was in the mood to get well and truly drunk. Maybe a good 40 proof alcohol will wash the sight of those pictures out of her brain.

_‘Well what do you know, huh? Of all the bars in the world…’_

_‘New York is a small place.’_

_‘Getting smaller by the minute.’_

She walks to the kitchen and pulls out the bottle. _‘You judging me Frank?’_

_‘I never judge an armed woman.’_

Karen chuckles, drinks the rest of the liquor in her glass.

_‘That’s a lame joke.’_

He shrugs, looks away. _‘Never knew any good ones.’_

_‘I don’t believe that. I think you’re hilarious.’_

_‘Dunno where you got that impression.’_

_‘You used to tell dad jokes, didn’t you?’_

_‘No, I didn’t’_

She snorts. Some of the liquor runs down her chin and she wipes it with the back of her hand. ‘ _I bet you did. I bet Maria found them funny.’_

_‘I always thought she laughed at me and not the jokes. Lisa liked them though.’_

_‘I’d like to hear some of them. My father never had a really great sense of humor.’_

_‘No?’_

_‘No. His jokes were of a different kind.’_

_‘You wanna talk about him tonight?’_

Karen says no out loud, slips out of her coat and throws it against the back of the chair before sitting on it. _‘No, no, I wanna get drunk tonight. You feel like keeping me company?’_

She uncaps the bottle and pours. Its generous. It burns all the way down to her gut, and the fire it starts there starts spreading outwards.

She’s still shaking so she pours another.

_‘You lonely, Karen?’_

_‘I’m sad, Frank. How about you?’_

He doesn’t say anything.

She starts crying. Usually she doesn’t, but tonight she’s drunk. She can’t stop thinking about those teenage girls who were found smothered in the docs so she takes another long sip, this time from the bottle.

_‘I hope you’re okay Frank. I really do. I hope you find some kind of peace, someday.’_

_‘Yeah? You think that’s possible, Karen? Or you wanna talk bedtime stories?’_

_‘How the fuck would i know, huh? I don’t know shit.’_ She laughs and it sounds strange in the silence of her apartment at two am _. ‘I didn’t even notice that you broke my heart.’_

She leans down, head against her crossed arms, on the table, presses the heel of her palm against her eyes.

His voice sounds low. As smooth as he can make it, which is not much. ‘ _Did I?’_

_‘It sounds so stupid.’_

_‘It is what it is.’_

_‘I never knew there were so many ways for it to break, you know? You expect it from certain people but not… not… ‘_

_‘Not trigger happy assholes who use you as bait in greasy diners?’_

_‘Sometimes you don't recover, right?’_

_‘Maybe you don't wanna. You'd be_ really _alone then, wouldn’t you?’_

 _‘Fuck you.’_ She sits up, faces the semi darkness of her apartment, a terrible need to stare at him in the face gnawing at her. Maybe that’s the alcohol. ‘ _Did you even feel anything that night? Did you? … Yeah, thought so.’_

-

Each morning before she starts her day, she has a hot shower. In the stall, she braces her hands against the cold tile and lets the water run over her body and tells herself it’s going to get better. Tells herself that today she will not hurt herself more than she is already hurting. That this loss, this whole time will move over her, through her, like a dark storm passing over a great plain, like the ones she has weathered before. A great plain which is, essentially, her life[9].

Grief is a circular staircase and she’s climbed so high, the tree-line has long disappeared. She’s been climbing it for years. Slipping on the stone faces of all her losses sometimes, but still hanging on. Below her life sprawls flat, all the landscapes she has ever known or dreamed of. A life that is neither light nor dark, neither wholly alone nor wholly with any other, certainly not with God. Just flat, open and free.[10].

Shoulders curled tight, feet planted on the tile floor  she hears herself say, ‘ _Something in me is dying. But I know who I’m talking to now.’_

-

She can’t stop looking at dark corners when she walks home and it’s because she has a healthy sense of self preservations, but sometimes, she almost expects him to walk out of them.

In the end he doesn’t do that. He’s not a subtle man, but she never expected something like this.

“Hey lady! Say I’m real hungry-”

* * *

 

[1] Warsan Shire. ’34 reasons why we failed at love’

[2] This whole conversation here is from ‘Damages’

[3] Caitlyn Siehl, Remember 

[4] ‘Damages’, again. (i'm not that cool, no, lmao)

[5] Margaret Atwood ‘we are hard’

[6] A Series of Unfortunate Events (Lemony Snicket)

[7] Elena Ferrante, tr. by Ann Goldstein, from The Days of Abandonment

[8] ‘Newsroom’ owns the great detective work i could have never made up. Yet again i prove im only here to indulge in feelz and not plot.

[9] Maggie Nelson, The Red Parts

[10] Maggie Nelson, The Red Parta

 


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